


Untitled

by Koren M (CyberMathWitch)



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Bourne Legacy (2012)
Genre: Backstory, Captain America: The Winter Soldier Spoilers, Clint Barton & Aaron Cross Siblings, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 11:09:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2810102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CyberMathWitch/pseuds/Koren%20M
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the fall, Aaron makes some startling discoveries.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Untitled

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ocianne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ocianne/gifts).



The streets of Jakarta were blistering hot in the afternoon sun. It was an unusually high heatwave, even for that part of the world, and one of the reasons they'd picked that particular time and place to settle down for a little while. The heat sucked the life out of even those born and raised in the region, leaving everyone in a slightly dulled stupor that didn't lend itself to paying close attention to things.

Or people.

Aaron thought the opposite was probably just as true, and made a mental note to run the idea of someplace northern and cold by Marta when she got back from the market. It was spring in the northern hemisphere but they weren't in any hurry. They could take their time and still make it to northern Russia by mid-fall.

The computer finally pinged to let him know it had a connection and he turned his attention to the screen. It had quickly become a nice routine, however temporary their stay in civilization was, to check in on the general worldwide and local news, and then to hunt around to see if they were on anyone's radar. 

He wasn't expecting what he found.

The same message over and over again - world news, local news, national, U.S., the BBC, Al Jazeera, every article and video he saw had variations of the same headlines: 

_Experimental Ships Downed Over D.C._

_U.S. Government Denies Knowledge of Covert Operations_

_Data Leaks Continue, Officials Refuse to Respond_

_Tragic Loss of Life in D.C. - Is Tony Stark to Blame?_

_New Evidence, Secret Government Assassination Program Uncovered_

He read quickly, hitting the highlights of _what_ happened first, then digging into _why_. He thought he understood how the intelligence community worked inside and out, but this... this was all new. S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hydra weren't names he'd heard mentioned before. The amount of data was dizzying, and with a sick, sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach he realized that whoever was behind the leak had exposed everything. All the programs, all the people, all the tests and operations, not just Outcome, not just Blackbriar - beyond the CIA, or MI6, or Mossad, or whatever the KGB called itself this week - but _everything_.

It was too much, and even as he was tapping in on torrent files to download and grab as much of the information as he could from people packaging it all up with nice little bows, he started searching for their names.

He did Marta’s first, but that didn't give him much. There were no surprises there; her background was solid and mostly a matter of public record. He didn’t think she’d appreciate seeing it splashed out in the open but mostly she faded into the dull background roar of names and details that most people wouldn't pay much attention to. More importantly, the ones who were looking for them wouldn't see anything they didn’t already know. The various aliases he'd made for her didn't rate so much as a drop in the bucket and he felt some of the muscles along his neck and shoulders loosen, just a bit.

 _Cross, Aaron_ , by contrast, produced a wealth of material, much of which he saved because he wanted to go back and study in more detail, but none of it revealed their current location or circumstances.

It wasn't until he took a chance and put in _Kitsom, Kenneth James_ that he hit the proverbial motherlode.

And it was nothing he could possibly have guessed.

*****

Aaron Cross had some definite ideas about where he'd come from. He could remember with sometimes painful intensity what life had been like in the group home in Nevada. He had a rather exceptional recall (now) of what he'd experienced there, of the things that had been said to him, and the assumptions he'd drawn out of them in what now seemed like a slow and clumsy way.

He'd assumed, for instance, that his parents hadn’t wanted him because of his disabilities. He didn’t have any memories of a biological family, but had many vague recollections of a myriad of foster homes full of impatience and rejection before child services had given up and put him in the state home.

The story that spun out before his very eyes was a very different one. His birth certificate listed him born to Harold and Edith Barton (nee Kitsom), and to his shock, also listed two living siblings at the time of his birth, Charles Bernard age five, and Clinton Francis, age two. 

He had parents.

He had brothers.

Or at least he’d _had_ parents and brothers. The computer and wifi connection struggled with the pace at which he was suddenly trying to cull through the material, the birth certificate and hospital reports leading to police reports and death certificates that confirmed Edith and Harold were both killed in a DUI-related car accident when he would’ve been about two years old. 

It felt a little like he was reading a story written about someone else. That someone had been badly injured in the crash and admitted to the children’s ward of the local hospital for treatment while his brothers were placed in foster care, and the medical records that were attached listed extensive brain damage and a prognosis of severely limited cognitive function. He felt his stomach twist uncomfortably as he realized that there could’ve been a cause, not just inherent flaw, behind the disabilities he’d struggled with for so long. Aaron could imagine being angry, if he’d known about this before, but he was a lifetime and a world away, and all he could manage was confusion and sadness at how badly things had gone wrong, for all of them.

He shoved the trail of paperwork surrounding himself to one side and then searched for the other two boys. ( _His brothers_ , he reminded himself.)

It wasn’t entirely surprising, given how long he was in the hospital and the special care he’d needed, that he’d been separated from the two older boys. There were a few reports from social services about the older brother’s aggressive behavior, and some concerns about how withdrawn the younger boy seemed, then there was just a single memo and a police report stating that they’d run away. It took further digging into the higher-level S.H.I.E.L.D. files to pick their trail back up again.

Apparently working for covert government organizations ran in the family.

Time passed quickly, and for the first time in a very long time he was so engrossed in what he was learning that he lost sight of his surroundings. Marta’s voice from the doorway startled him, and he was grateful he caught himself before he’d fully drawn his gun.

“Aaron, what’s wrong?” she asked carefully, eyeing the weapon even as he set it on the table. “I wasn’t even trying to be quiet.”

“Sorry. I-” How to explain, he wondered? How could he tell her just how much of his world had just been turned upside down?

“Something happend back in the States this morning. An agency even I hadn’t heard of got blown wide open, and someone on the inside leaked all their data. And it looks like they had data on anyone and everything.”

From the look on her face he didn’t have to explain what he meant by that.

“How much do they know?” He watched her shift into what he’d come to think of as her crisis mode. She set down the market bag and started to reach for the shelves where they’d stowed most of their supplies since they’d planned to stay for a little while, and he reached out and gently took her wrist to stop her. 

“Hey, it’s okay. I checked, they don’t know where we are now or who we are here.”

“Promise?”

“Yeah.”

She relaxed marginally. “Then what’s wrong? You look like someone just told you the sky is actually green.”

Aaron took a deep breath and tried to think of the best way to put it. “They don’t know where we are now, but they know about who we were before. All of who we were before. All the way back to Kenneth.”

Marta’s eyes widened. Her records at the lab hadn’t included his previous identity.

“What did you find?”

“That I wasn’t given up because I was slow. I don’t know why I’d always thought that, but I had. My parents died in a car crash.”

He took a deep breath.

“And I have brothers.”

She sat down with him at the table, and he pulled information up on the computer because it was something to do, but he knew Marta was looking at his face more than the screen. The oldest brother, he told her, was in jail in Kansas for a variety of crimes including armed robbery. The youngest, he wasn’t sure about. “He worked for this organization,” Aaron explained, indicating the headlines.

“S.H.I.E.L.D.?”

“Yeah, apparently.”

“And you didn’t even know it existed?”

“No. I’d never heard of it, which is a little weird considering just how much they know about me.”

“I looks like they know way too much about everyone,” she commented drily.

“Yeah, you could say that.”

“So where is he now?”

“I’m… not sure. The last place they have him working was a facility in New Mexico, then he was involved in New York last May.”

Marta looked down for a minute, he knew she was remembering what they’d seen in the papers when they’d stopped into port a few weeks after the invasion, and how they’d found out the world had turned upside down yet again.

“And then what?”

He cleared his throat and clicked through to another page. “That’s where it goes cold. I don’t know if he died in the attack? But there’s no death certificate listed. It’s almost like whoever leaked everything deliberately left him out after that point.”

“Do you think he’s the, what, whistleblower?”

“Not sure if that’s the term, but maybe. Or maybe it’s just someone he’s working with.”

They lapsed into an uncomfortable silence while he waited for her to digest everything he was throwing at her.

“Do you want to go back? Try to find him?”

“I don’t know. It’d be dangerous. We can’t really hide in the States anymore.”

“They’re probably pretty distracted right now, all things considered.”

“There’s no guarantee he’s even still there. We’re safe here, we’d planned to take a few weeks.”

Marta nodded, as if she’d just wanted him to confirm what she already thought his answer would be.

“Alright then. We stay here, like we planned. We get a few more IDs set up, squirrel away more supplies, and you keep looking.” She stood, and started to put away the food she’d picked up, set a pot on the tiny stove so he could start their dinner. 

“And if I find him?”

“We do what we always do. We cross that bridge when we come to it.”

**Author's Note:**

> Dear Reader, I hope you like this story! I enjoyed trying to fuse the two realities and work through some of Aaron's background and feelings about his childhood. Happy Yuletide! :D


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